


untitled Harmony/Fred

by papyrocrat



Category: Angel: the Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-09
Updated: 2010-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 06:09:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat





	untitled Harmony/Fred

Fred closes her office door and leans against it, blocking the world out.

 _Maybe you should try looking inward_.

Fred won’t look suspiciously at any of her boys.In the cool dark of her office, it almost seems possible.

Her desk light clicks on unbidden.Fred gasps, and reaches for the revolver she’s started hiding in her bookshelf.

“Relax, girlfriend!It’s just me.”Harmony, cross-legged on Fred’s desk and filing her impossibly pink nails, is a bizarrely welcome sight.“How are things upstairs?”Fortunately, this is Harmony, and she doesn’t wait for an answer before she picks something up to toy with.“What’s this do?”

“That’s….a DaVinci device.”Fred takes it out of Harmony’s hands and places it on an empty shelf.“Wes thinks he was an amateur warlock, and if we tweak the plans we can get them to work.Not sure how useful it will be, but it’s a prestige thing.”

Prestige, nothing.“ _Wes_ thinks, huh?”Harmony asks slyly.“I knew you had a thing for him!”Fred isn’t sure what this thing with Wesley is, and never really has been.Nobody’s ever asked, least of all Wesley.

“You are pining for some girl talk, sister.I can tell.”Fred blinks.Apparently Harmony is the insightful vampire around here.“Oh, come on, I at least owe you a drink for all the-“ she mimes a head injury, and Fred can’t help but laugh and agree.

It’s the middle of the week, which Harmony assures her is prime time for demon karaoke at a nearby dive.It’s not like Caritas.Demons mix _sub rosa_ with the human crowd, and the Bloody Marys aren’t quite up to Harmony’s specifications; still, Fred doesn’t feel the urge to hide everything she knows.They get frozen margaritas – “extra-extra-strawberry,” Harmony insists, “no reason I can’t pretend” – and only after they’ve conquered the first third of the pitcher does Fred loosen up about her day.

Harmony’s unimpressed.“I don’t get why they can’t both get shamanated or whatever.It’s always a stupid dick contest with those two, I swear.It’s like, grow _up_ already.Eat two shamans.”She gasps and hides her fangs with her fingers and her guileless smile.“Or whatever.”

Fred considers correcting her, but all told she’d rather her problems be about shamans, and so she loses herself in Harmony’s theory of workplace conflict resolution.“When _I_ was a master vampire,” – Fred chokes on her straw and covers with a cough – “two of my minions used to fight all the time.Usually about me.Sometimes about who got to eat someone they tracked down together, because they were too _pathetic_ to do it on their own, but usually about me.And I’d have to be like, ‘guys, chill out, neither of you are even in my league, and if you don’t share that guy, _I’m_ just going to eat him,’ and eventually they learned to get along.Until Buffy came and staked them all.”Harmony rolls her eyes.“The one time I left them alone, I came back and they had just ripped the throat apart, and there was blood everywhere and they were trying to lick it off my unicorns. Which is totally like Angel and Bl-Spike.There’s nobody they _have_ to listen to.”

“Y’know, you’re right.”Harmony looks startled, and then terribly pleased.Fred is a little surprised herself.“Someone does need to tell them what to do.Both of ‘em.Or it’s just going to be….disasstrus.”Harmony nods gravely.

Her Texas twang slips back into her mouth, as sweet and thick as her syrupy drink.Harmony reminisces about high school and Sunnydale and, as they order their second pitcher, says a few things about Spike that definitely weren’t on the chart.As they finish the second pitcher, Fred tells Harmony about the chart, and she hasn't laughed like this in weeks.

Eventually Harmony convinces her to get up and sing, and Fred insists on country music.They’re arm in arm and sharing the microphone, tequila on their breath and the south in their ears, and for a moment, Fred is home.

*

Even from the back corner of the bar, they make a sweet picture and a precious sound: Harmony and her off-key confidence, Fred with her surprising strong alto, and their light and dark hair falling from their workaday ponytails into each other’s faces.

For a terrible moment, Lorne sees an anguished supernova against an eternal expanse of blue.Out of habit, he tries to match the destiny with the music, but the girls are tangled up together, and it swallows them both whole.

He walks out the door away from his sea breeze and, as he does so often these days, hopes he’s wrong.


End file.
